Friday, December 30, 2005

2005 in Review

2005 in Review

German-style games

(2012 republishing note: lots of broken links here. If you're reading this in, say, late 2012 and the links are still broken, email me)

2005 was a very good year for German-style games.

In my mind, I know this. 2005 was not just a good year, in fact, but in terms of sheer quantity of top-tier games, it was perhaps the best on record if you like good, engaging, social games. I have long considered 2000 to be the last great year for German-style games, and looking back on my 2000 in Review article, 2005 significantly exceeds it in quantity of first-class releases. Perhaps Knizia's 2005 genre-buster, Beowulf, is not quite the ground breaking game that Knizia's 2000 genre-buster, Lord of the Rings, was; but it's close enough.

Why the doubt in my heart, then? I think because there was not a single real "find" in 2005. The long list of top games was produced almost exclusively by the usual suspects: Knizia, Teuber, Kramer, Tresham, alea, Hans im Glück, and Kosmos. In every past year, significant contributions are made to my list by other designers and publishers. Maybe it's an interesting but niche game like Andrea Meyer's Mall World or Schwartzarbeit, Heinrich Glumpler's Feurio!, or Gunter Cornett's Flaschenteufel; a game published by a major label, but from a designer with a thin track record, like Wilko Manz's Fifth Avenue; or good games from but less-reliable or less-prolific publishers like Days of Wonder, Doris & Frank, or Amigo. Not so for 2005 (Reef Encounter, being a reprint, doesn't really count).

Now, obviously not everything on my list of good games is from the standard big names. I've divided things up between "top" and "good" games this year, the distinction being primarily that I expect to be playing "top" games at least occasionally a year from now, while the "good" games are fun for a bit but ultimately disposable. There are obviously quite a few games in the "good" category from unexpected sources, but nothing in the top list. The part of me that is a game critic lives for the unusual find, and so the absence of anything in this category is a bit of a blow.

But, if you're not a self-appointed game critic, this was a great year. Well, for boardgames, anyway.

Top Games

10 - Candamir: Candamir is the type of game that falls through the cracks when making these lists, if for no other reason than timing. It came out in Germany in ’04 and the US in mid-’05. Interestingly, this is one of the few games that has gotten a facelift before being published here. The original was no great shakes, but Mayfair made some critical improvements … read more about it here.

9 - E&T: The Cardgame: This is probably the most faithful card game version of a board game ever. While it's liable to be almost incoherent to those who have not played the board game, for fans of the original it provides a satisfying condensed package. In my experience, it's better with 4 than with 3. A couple pieces that include the E&T Cardgame are here and here.

8 - Reef Encounter: This was actually one of the better games from last year, but the prohibitive price kept me from making my main list. Now that it's generally available with the reprint from Z-Man games, this is one to check out if you're a fan of placement games or meatier euros like Tigris and Euphrates or Goa. Not on par with those classics, but Reef Encounter easily exceeds Richard Breese's other recent efforts, Keythedral and Keytown.

7 - Revolution: The Dutch Revolt 1568-1648: Classic Francis Tresham, Phalanx finally hits a home run. This is a big game which takes 4-6 hours to play, but it finally gives us a fairly big, free-form, empire-building/conflict game that doesn't degenerate into a whine-fest, but is still dynamic enough to be interesting. More here and here.

6 - Louis XIV: Rudiger Dorn is becoming a reliable name in medium-to-high-end German-style games. I first became aware of him with the terrific Traders of Genoa, and then he went on to do Goa, Jambo, and now this DSP-winning game. A planning game similar to Caylus, Louis XIV is shorter, simpler, more interactive, more fluid, has reasonable theming, and is overall much cleaner, all of which work for me. A piece on the Nürnburg games, which includes Louis XIV, can be found here.

5 - Palazzo - This is another wonderful Knizia bidding game. He sometimes takes flak for doing "yet another auction game," but the fact of the matter is that the auction game is an extremely broad category, and yet one that no other designer has mastered. For me, Knizia never ceases to amaze by being able to put out games of this type that are consistently new and different. One of the neat things about Palazzo is the pacing, with a low-pressure start lulling you into a false sense of security before you are crushed by an increasingly high-pressure endgame. Joe Gola had a nice piece on Palazzo that I wish I had written.

4 - Tower of Babel - Palazzo and Tower of Babel are both auction games, but as a pair they demonstrate just how broad a term "auction game" is. Tower of Babel blends auction, area control, and resource management elements in a brilliant, seamless, low-complexity package. In case you haven't read it already, the piece on Louis XIV had some details on Tower of Babel also.

3 - Elasund: The First City - I definitely liked Candamir, and even kind of liked Anno 1503, but with Elasund Klaus Teuber has produced another top-tier game to stand alongside Settlers and Starfarers. I have a piece on this gamehere.

2 - Hacienda - Hacienda reminds me of so many other good games. It seems to blends flavors from Through the Desert, Get the Goods, and Saint Petersburg, just to pick a few. In the hands of a lesser designer than Kramer it could feel like a collection of spare parts, but in his hands it becomes a new, coherent whole with a flavor and appeal all its own. Although I expected good things from Kramer and Hans im Glück, this was tempered by the fact that I was not a huge fan of the whole Tikal/Torres line of his games, and as such the fact that Hacienda is so good and so elegant was a pleasant surprise. This has already gotten a ton of play and I expect it to continue to do so for quite some time. Here is a piece on this game.

1 - Beowulf - The Legend - I have an in-depth review here (along with a little bit of reader feedback). Knizia just keeps getting better, which – given his long and distinguished history – is amazing. Beowulf is impressive not just for being a great game, but for being a legitimate artistic interpretation of the epic poem.

The Good

Lighter Games: There were a few good games that, while probably of marginal interest to the hobbyist gamer, might nonetheless be of interest as games for playing with the family: Stefan Dorra's beautiful but awkwardly-themedAmazonas (think of it as a railroad game rather than a game of slaughtering rare plant and animal species) and Michael Rieneck's Around the World in 80 Days. Ark, from the always-reliable Doris & Frank, is a nice, light card game with a flavorful theme, and Doris' wonderful artwork is always best-served by their own games. Dragonriders is a race game from Jean du Poel and Klaus-Jürgen Wrede, and while there are some issues including a wretched rule book, the simple play, well-designed tracks, and good tension make it a game I quite enjoy. Usually I am not nearly as enamored of Knizia's small-box games as I am of his big games, but the King Arthur Card Game was an exception – not a great game, but fun filler and appropriately short. I liked Kablamo!as a truly odd game, in the vein of Munchkin or Bang! but actually fun, but I can certainly respect that it will not be for everyone.

Medium-weight Games: Sunriver Games came on the scene with Havoc: The Hundred Years War, a card game of drafting good poker hands, which is probably too expensive and definitely too long, but nonetheless represents a good start for them; I'll be keeping an eye on their future releases. Phalanx continues in its attempt to do German-style games with Mesopotamia, a game which is ultimately probably too simple but still is a solid, short civilization-building game without the usual problems. Wings of War: Burning Drachens finally rounds out the Wings of War package with some very nice altitude rules and air-to-ground scenarios. It's no longer quite the simple, elegant game that originally won me over, but the variety of types of engagements is much-needed. Although it's an older game, I discovered WildWords (company site) this year which is a neat redevelopment of Scrabble that may appeal to casual fans of that game.

Higher-end Games: Francis Tresham's 1829 Mainline finally came out, and while I had some reservations, overall I enjoyed playing it. Friedrich is a nice German-style wargame, a bit long and maybe a bit slow, but simple, clever, and tactically interesting, providing a lot of gaming bang for the complexity, by the standards of wargamey stuff anyway.

Abstracts:Deflexion (company site) is a gimmick game, but the gimmick works, and casual gamers have a hard time resisting a game with a laser. The GIPF-series has been steadily losing some steam; this may be a somewhat unfair judgment since the first few games (GIPF, TAMSK, ZERTZ) were so utterly brilliant that anything that came after was bound to slow down a bit, but nonetheless PÜNCT seems the least inspired and most derivative of the lot. It's still a pretty clever game, however, and fans of the series will enjoy the new entry I think.

The Caylus Phenomenon: Unless you’ve been living in a cave, or perhaps just don’t follow online discussion groups, you probably are aware that a little game called Caylus was published this year. It was greeted with extreme enthusiasm by the online crowd, with BoardgameGeek ratings catapulting it into the all-time 2nd highest-rated game slot, surging past such hall-of-fame games as Settlers of Catan, El Grande, Tigris and Euphrates, Carcassonne, and so on. I’ve played it a half-dozen times now, and it neither makes my list as a good game nor as a bad game. This little bit of insanity will pass.

The Not-So-Good. OK, the Lousy.

In addition to the many excellent games, 2005 seemed to have more than its share of real clunkers. In some cases, the whole enterprise just seemed ill-advised. But more usually, the culprit was predictable: inadequate or non-existent development work. It seems to me that many amateur game designers have a vision of what they want a game to look like, and are unwilling to surrender any creative control to a developer. These designers usually get another label: "unpublished" or "self-published". If I could identify a trend in bad games in 2005, it would be that of some publishers joining the bandwagon by putting their faith in a designer and ignoring the need for a sound development process (I'm looking at you, Fantasy Flight), to the detriment of their customers.

Some of the bad games we got this year included Antike, a game that probably shouldn't even have been green-lighted without at least one working interesting idea. Australia and Il Principe weren't terrible games, but they weren't that good either, and these are case studies in why German games get a bad reputation for themeing; the themes here are such awful paste-up jobs that it's actually kind of embarrassing. Caravans of Ahldarahd was the first game from BlindLuck studios, and while the ideas were very good and had promise, the development was non-existent and the game flat-out didn't work. Indonesia was Splotter taking another run at the whole Roads & Boats thing, but this is another game that someone should probably have done a sanity check on somewhere in the middle of the process, realizing that this wasn't going to work out as well as hoped. I'm not sure Siena is actually awful, but the evidence is fairly compelling that it is, and it certainly has both the worst rule book and worst graphic design of the year. SuDoku - Das Brettspiel was Knizia when he's not really trying, mechanical, unimaginative, and uninteresting, although – amusingly – the theme works rather well. And Doom: The Boardgame was an excellent core design utterly savaged by totally inadequate development, with scenarios that are ludicrously unbalanced, a game that is thoroughly unplayable with 4 players, and a playing time that exceeds the interesting content by at least a factor of two. This is particularly unfortunate because I am certain that there is a good game in there. But the game Fantasy Flight shipped is certainly not it.

This brings us in the last to Shadows over Camelot(and here's an update where I wonder if that review was too generous) which is certainly not the worst game of the year but for me was absolutely the most disappointing. I'm a huge Lord of the Rings Boardgame fan, and was hoping for something that was at least within shouting distance of that classic. It might have been unreasonable to expect something as good, but still, Lord of the Rings blazed a trail that nobody has yet followed. Shadows over Camelot is ultimately too uninteresting, too long, too tedious, too complex, far too dependant on luck for its tension, and much too detached from its putative theme. A shame, because if the designers had learned the lessons of Lord of the Rings, the potential was there; the developer certainly should have realized that this was going in the wrong direction well before it reached its final state.

Major Chokes

This category is reserved for the games that should be good, but aren't. They are so close you can taste them. They have good ideas and very interesting elements, but ultimately are killed by problems that really should have been pretty obvious to the publisher, and should have been either fixed or resulted in the game remaining unpublished. I offer them up only for illustrative purposes.

Fantasy Flight is a permanent resident of these parts, and their Arkham Horror is a more painful case study than usual, just because it is so close. So much is done well in this game, but too many balances are clearly out of whack. The game is much too easy on the players, largely because no effort was made to scale properly with the number of players – a huge and consistent problem with their games. And the gameplay is just not dense enough, with too much tedious mucking around with lost or wasted turns and running around Arkham.Parthenon: Rise of the Agean is another painful miss, with lots of good stuff but ultimately too many balances are too severely out of whack.

Viktory was a clever attempt to circumvent some of the problems with Risk and bring in some modern design elements, but ultimately it couldn't solve the one problem that Risk did manage to tackle and is a classic because of it: the need for the game to end at some point.

Near-Misses

Fiese Freunde Fette Feten had a very clever theme with wonderful art, but just didn't provide enough actual gameplay. Likewise Nexus Ops got a lot of things right on the analytical side of the game design but fails to provide a soul, that one interesting twist that gets you to power through the downtime to play a second time. Ticket to Ride: Europe should have fixed some of my problems with the original, but it lost the original's elegance and the increased luck element is not going to appeal to the more serious gamers whom the greater complexity would seem to indicate the game is aimed at.

Some Expansions

Memoir '44 got three nice expansions, adding the Soviets, more terrain, and a bunch of special rules for use in scenarios. This is mostly good stuff, although some is questionable (like the Big Guns). Blue Moon continued adding more variety to this fascinating game, and this being Knizia and all, the quality seems to be staying high, although none of the new decks are as interestingly different as the Khind or Flit were. The bewildering array of Age of Steammaps continues to proliferate, and while I like the design philosophy of making each new map a different game with the addition of a small number of dramatic special rules, I wish someone would publish a spreadsheet telling me which maps work with which numbers of players and what playing styles. Playing the new France map with 3 players was the first fundamentally unsatisfying game of Age of Steam I've played in a while. Power Grid added maps for Italy and France, which was nice because it got the base game on the table again and I enjoyed it. The game is ultimately too unstable to be a classic, but good enough to deserve occasional play, and as such the new maps are well-timed.

Major Games I Missed

Some of the major releases I didn't play included Eagle's Conquest of the Empire and Railroad Tycoon: The Boardgame; I am reliablyinformed that these might not suck, but since Eagle's record is pretty bad at this point I haven't yet been tempted. I might yet get sucked into Railroad Tycoon, but my reading of the tea leaves of online commentary doesn't inspire great hope, and besides, I'm pretty happy with Age of Steam. After reading the rules, Twilight Imperium: 3rd Edition was a no-brainer to skip (and by the way, if anyone from Fantasy Flight is reading, that was a class act, the thoroghly backhanded compliment to George Lucas in the dedication. Here’s a tip: it's best to err in favor of respect when you're a niche game designer and he's created one of the great epic stories of all time). I'm pretty Carcassonne’d out at this point (and was never a huge fan), so I passed on Carcassonne: The Discovery, especially given the whole FunAgain exclusive thing. Freya's Folly is a small-press game I passed on while I was at Essen, but regretted afterwards, especially given the abysmal quality of the other small-press games I played; Don Bone's previous Sunda to Sahul was solid, so I'll give it a try when it becomes available in the US.

The amount of time I spend playing RPGs isn't that great, but this is the year I finally moved from D&D to Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved, a choice I am very pleased with ... then what happens, but Malhavoc hits me with Monte Cook Presents Iron Heroes, another great-looking d20-based system. I want to experience more of Arcana Evolved, so I'm not going to be switching anytime soon, but I've already sucked a large chunk of stuff from Iron Heroes into my Arcana Evolved game, including Skill Groups, the more-generous and less-variable hit die, and zones. Also, my AE game has benefited from importing a bit of the Iron Heroes style. If I make it to the summer game cons next year, I'll have my eyes open for Iron Heroes games.

Although it’s actually from 2004, I bought Wizards of the Coast’s Eberron sourcebook this year in the hopes of finding a setting for D&D which might be more robust than the implied one. What I found was something that appeared even more unbalanced (i.e., prone to munchkinism) than core D&D, which is saying something. It’s easy to say “well, just play with non-munchkins”, but even reasonable players can make reasonable choices that end up creating, through no fault of their own, characters that are grossly under- or over-powered, which is just not good. I know it’s an RPG, but these things still are important. This is why I am now a loyal Malhavoc customer. They may not be quite there yet, but at least they’re trying.Another game technically from 2004, Hollywood Lives finally became generally available in the US this year, and it was a lot of fun.

As regular readers of my blog will know, for some reason my wargaming time has been thin this year, especially for new titles. I don't know how much this had to do with getting slammed by Empire of the Sun early, or maybe just an unappealing crop of games; but for whatever reason, I haven't been keeping up as much with the new releases, although quite a few older games (EastFront, Rommel in the Desert, Stonewall in the Valley, Kasserine, Europe Engulfed) got good play.

The Good

The ASL Starter Kit #2 finally got us some heavy equipment, and along with that a game with a little more variety than the Starter Kit #1. I'm still not entirely sold on this whole Starter Kit concept – it's more ASL Lite than a completely compelling game on its own merits, and it could really use more maps – but the WWII tactical game niche is surprisingly thin on good games, and the starter kits are cheap. Bonaparte at Marengo (more) made a good splash as a nice, low-complexity wargame; it has lots of neat elements and a unique feel. It ultimately was just a bit too ungainly and play was a bit too stereotyped for it to stay on the table that long, but I look forward to the next game in the series.

The Very Good

Lock 'n Load: Band of Heroes: despite a graphic design that ranges from the satisfactory (the counters) down to the unacceptable (the maps and cards), and the more than occasionally tiresome "attitude", this is a system that is tried and true by now, a good game with interaction and tension and a fair amount of replay value, and it finally gives us a good alternative to the immense ASL or the long-gone Squad Leader.

Battle of Five Armies did for Warmaster what Lord of the Rings did for Warhammer. The rule book has issues in the second half (some of them pretty serious), but the game plays quickly and gives the players frequent, real, meaningful choices and the battles can take decisive turns based on those choices. For me this sort of linear warfare is never going to be quite as compelling as the skirmish-level Lord of the Rings game, but on the other hand I enjoyed this much more than any other ancients or Napoleonics system I’ve played. And, as usual, Games Workshop's figures are very nice. The non-trivial drawback is the lack of different scenarios.

Roads to Leningrad is Vance von Borries’ new game, picking up where Kasserine left off. After playing a frustrating run of ultimately disappointing new wargames throughout the year, coming back to this right at the end was a refreshing experience. Von Borries’ games are always well-designed and thoroughly-developed, and he has an eye for situations that make good, playable, interesting games. The two battles here are slightly obscure but very well-chosen: 1941 Soviet attacks and counterattacks against an overextended German spearhead, and the great Kasserine system is nicely tweaked to include chit pulls, making the game more interactive, more dynamic, and reflecting the strengths and weaknesses of the two sides at this time. He also understands the need for playable and interesting smaller scenarios to go with the big campaign games.

The Not-So-Good

Worthington Games' Clash for a Continent failed to follow up on their success with Victoria Cross, giving us a game almost completely devoid of interest.

Remember when I talked in the German-style games section above about games that someone should have asked "you know, do you really think this is a good idea?" well before publication? Lightning: War on Terror is one of those games.

The poster child for all the games that misfired this year though is Empire of the Sun; you can read my review-like piece. The rules are already up to something like revision 1.4 (I played version 1.1, I think – which came out like days after the game was published), and at this point they contain a lot of red ink, which is never a good sign. Now, Empire of the Sun is not train-wreck bad like Go Tell the Spartans was; it’s more immensely frustrating bad like Shadows over Camelot, although there is certainly an element of train wreckage too. The players aids are riddled with errors, the rules are confusing, the War in Europe track doesn’t work, the victory conditions are dumb, air rules are sometimes bizarre, the interceptions strangely all-or-nothing … it’s easy to point the finger at the designer for this turgid effort, but that GMT would actually agree to publish Empire of the Sun in this state is bewildering, and they have once again discouraged me from ever using their P500 system again. To his credit, Mark Herman has continued to work with the game’s fans to make something reasonable out of it. But the omens are ill. There is only a certain degree to which games can be fixed after their release.

The Awful

Near-Misses

Triumph of Chaos is a really fun game that is burdened with rules that are at least 15 pages too long. This could have been a long-term keeper if there had been a developer that had been able to take a machete to the thicket of chrome. Grand Illusion was a B-level game that could have been an A-level game if only it had been a bit shorter, or played a bit more quickly, or had a bit more tension. Instead, a slight excess of rules combined with a horrible rule book and a lack of player aids took it down to a C. A Call to Arms is Mongoose's Babylon 5 space combat game, which scored by being simple and playable, but then had a problem with a very unwieldy shot resolution system for some weapons systems, and several scenarios that were almost laughably broken. Mongoose has kept chipping away at the problems, though, and recent revisions of the rules have improved things significantly ... but it's still not where it needs to be.

Games I Missed

Given my less-than-positive experience with The Napoleonic Wars, I passed on Wellington. Some friends have liked it though, so I may yet give it a chance. GMT's release schedule this year was surprisingly short on games I was interested in actually playing, and beyond The Burning Blue, I'm not sure 2006 will be much of an improvement. Perhaps Twilight Struggle or Unhappy King Charles will work out. In fact, the release schedules for all of my favorite wargame companies (Columbia, GMT, MMP, OSG, maybe Clash of Arms) were a bit thin this year.

Unplayed

Three games that are actually quite promising remain unplayed in my collection: GMT's Carthage, Columbia's Crusader Rex, and MMP's Fire in the Sky. All three could be long-term keepers. I hope to play Crusader Rex and Fire in the Sky sometime in the near future.

2004 in Retrospect

Just for interest’s sake, and to add some accountability to this process, I thought I might take a brief look back at my picks for the last couple years and see how well they've held up.

My top 5 picks from 2004 included San Juan, Goa, Einfach Genial, and Blue Moon; all have held up well and gotten a fair amount of play this year. Einfach Genial (now Ingenious) in particular has done well as it can be played and enjoyed by gamers of many types. San Juan has tapered off in terms of play time in the second half of 2005, but probably remains my most-played game published in 2004. The only one of my top 5 that hasn't done well in terms of actual play time was Fifth Avenue, but part of the problem there has been the bad reputation that has been so hard to shake. I would still play it most days; more on this later.

Games I whacked included Saint Petersburg, Oltremare, and War of the Ring. Saint Petersburg has vanished entirely from my play groups. War of the Ring was played a bit through the first months of 2005 but not since. I still plan to pick up the expansion when it becomes available, but it remains a game that, like Memoir '44, is both interesting and frustrating; but at least Memoir '44 is short.

Some picks that seem a bit questionable in retrospect include Ticket to Ride, Maharaja, Razzia!, Sword of Rome, and Victoria Cross. None of these games have had much (or any) play in 2005. I probably over-rated Ticket to Ride in sympathy with the wide acclaim it got; I think it's a decent game, but for me personally, perhaps not overly noteworthy. The comparative weakness of Ticket to Ride: Europe may have dragged down the original too, though. Maharaja is a bit chaotic, and I always liked it better than any of my friends; I think maybe my friends were right. Razzia! just doesn't hold up that well when compared to Ra, and Ra is now back in print. Folks who have followed my blog are probably also aware of my eventual disillusionment with Sword of Rome. Victoria Cross is an interesting game, but probably didn't deserve to be rated as highly as it was, certainly not in front of Gettysburg, which has gotten a bit of play this year.

Top wargame picks were Europe Engulfed and Rommel in the Desert. EE hung on to get a lot of play this year, but the length and commitment required has been slowly running it down. Still, a two-year run with a lot of play is very good; every wargame convention I went to saw me playing EE in that time frame. I remain very fond of the game, but see its play time continuing to diminish. Rommel in the Desert is an all-time classic that continues to get play, and given that it was a reprint it was a no-brainer pick (an argument for not generally including reprints, I guess; but things are often blurry). Ardennes '44 also got a few plays this year, and remains a game I like a lot, although not one I'm ever going to play frequently.

Two games that I liked and still like, but never seemed to get momentum, were Fifth Avenue and Shadow of the Emperor. Despite the fact that they haven't gotten much long-term play, I'm still comfortable with how I rated them.

I flagged Candamir and Downtown as promising games I didn't get a chance to play. Candamir's potential did eventually pan out, although the route was meandering, and it makes this year’s list. I've recently gotten a chance to experiment with Downtown, and was quite taken with it; this is another game I hope to play more soon.

Somewhat embarrassingly, there were a couple very good games that I missed entirely: Jambo, Wings of War and Colossal Arena. Wings of War got dragged down a bit because of the huge delay between the release of the basic set and its critical companion Watch Your Back!; and then while Watch Your Back! promised to open up a lot more interesting mission-type situations, the game suffered from recurring problem of (do I even need to mention it at this point?) rather obviously unbalanced scenarios that clearly nobody spent any time thinking about. So Wings of War hasn't gotten a lot of play, but I remain a fan, and I like the new Burning Drachens set.

2003 in Retrospect

The only German-style games to have staying power from 2003's list year were, thankfully, my top picks – Domain and Amun-Re. Both have had some play time this year. The others have more or less disappeared, with the exception possibly of Feurio and Flaschenteufel. Some I would actively resist ever playing again (like Attika), while some (Schwartzarbeit, Eiszeit/Mammoth Hunters) I remain fond of and still have a spot in my collection, but just don't see the light of day.

Basically nothing from the wargame list is still being played. Liberty hit the table once this year, but the play-balance questions hang over it like a cloud. The overpowering Diplomacy cards killed Age of Napoleon. Monty's Gamble was fun, and I still own my copy, but the replayability wasn't as strong as hoped and it was probably a touch too complicated given the short game length and constrained nature of the battle. But, it did get a fair amount of play and I remain a fan. Korea: The Forgotten War has been a casualty of my lack of time and the inherent difficulties involved in huge games; although I also remain an OCS fan, for practical reasons Ardennes '44 is more the sort of game I play now.

The two survivors are Lock 'n Load and, of course, Shadow and Flame. Gotta love those Goblin Shamans. Both of these should obviously have been rated higher.

Of the RPGs, Arcana Unearthed finally hit the table this year in its new, Arcana Evolved edition. With RPGs, I'm never exactly sure how much to credit to the system and how much to the group playing it, but AE has been a success and after years of off-again, on-again frustration with D&D, I'm extremely happy with it. AE and AU both have tie-in books of short stories (Children of the Rune and The Dragon's Return) which I read this year and which were both overall really surprisingly good.

I was hard on D&D 3.5, but in retrospect perhaps I was not hard enough. D&D 3.5 was an improvement over 3.0, but was it worth the $75 to upgrade all you books? D&D still needs some significant bodywork, and it needs it soon; the effort Wizards spent on 3.5 could have been much more usefully directed either towards D&D 4.0 or a new product line.

So, that’s it. 2005 is done, and at least for the German-style games, 2006 will have a hard time matching it; I expect to be playing many of these games for a long time. The wargame side of the slate was weak, but I still managed to play one outstanding game (Roads to Leningrad), and with several promising games unplayed and with Shifting Sands and The Burning Blue coming up early in 2006, I’ll have things to keep me busy for a while yet.